


Olivia.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Alternate Universe, Arranged Marriages, Attempted Forced Abortion, Come And See The Violence Inherent In The System, Implied Honor Killing, Misogyny, POV Original Character, Political Marriages, Rape, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempts, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra, Time Period: Reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Trigger Warnings, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-27
Updated: 2011-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-15 23:58:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/166233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Olivia Charlotte Vorkosigan Vorbarra does not kill her husband, and other scenes from a life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Olivia.

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Оливия](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6694201) by [jetta_e_rus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jetta_e_rus/pseuds/jetta_e_rus)



> **Warnings:** There's a reason this is saved on my computer as "oliviaverseiamnotwritingthis". Consider this a major warning for implied rape, violence towards women, misogyny, and talk of suicide. It's not very explicit, but I would personally rate this as triggery.

1.

"It's going to be a girl," Piotr tells Ezar.

There's never any question about what happens next. The bloodline needs to be closed, Serg's claim needs to be sealed. There's no room for questions or second thoughts. There's no room for anything but politics. She's Vor and the duty of the Vor is quite clear; Olivia lives her whole life in her political reality. She can't not, not when her mother dies, pregnant with a bastard son when Olivia is three and Gran'da gets an Imperial favor to hold onto custody. Their next Empress won't be raised by Vorrutyers, can't be allowed to be part of that family; everyone remembers Yuri.

Serg looks too much like Yuri for anyone to ever forget him.

The Imperial wedding is a circus. Olivia grits her teeth and gets through it. She's grit her teeth through her whole life and she can't stop now or she'll burst.

 

2.

"If your son comes near me again, I'll cut his testicles off with a rusty blade," Olivia tells Ezar. "And watch him bleed to death. Laughing."

Negri looks vaguely uncomfortable, like he knows he should be doing something about this, but Olivia had the foresight of bringing the General along with her when she made her ultimatum. She's been his pawn, now he's her weapon.

"What did he do now?" Ezar asks.

"Came at me with a knife," Olivia says. She holds it up higher. "I took it from him, and I'll give it back to him blade first. If you don't keep him away. You can have a son or a grandson, sire. Choose."

 

3.

Ezar chooses his grandson. Little Gregor's life is bought with Negri's knife in the dark and his name is bought as an Imperial favor to one of Ezar's political enemies, and Olivia is a widow at nineteen years old.

She thinks she quite likes it.

Before her formal betrothal, she had made her grandfather promise her that he would not allow another Vorbarra to kill Olivia Vorkosigan, and when General Piotr lifts the one-month-old prince from his crib the night after they bury Serg, he says, with sincere emotion, "make sure he grows up as his mother's son."

Gregor cries at night and Olivia, for all her official mourning, has never smiled so much.

 

4.

"He is a dear boy," Alys says, troubled. "But, forgive me, Livie, can you really look at him and not see Serg all the time? I can't."

"Give him some time," Olivia says. "And maybe a few missed haircuts. Give the inbreeding time to sort itself out. He might even end up looking like a Vorkosigan. There are significantly worse fates."

Her father's married some Betan woman he met on a long cruise out near Escobar and he might finally give Gran'da some grandsons. For now, General Piotr visits his great-grandson and bounces him on his knee and looks like a heavy weight has been lifted off his shoulders, even without a grandson to carry on his name, and Olivia tells Alys to just marry Padma already. One of them deserves some happiness in marriage, after all. And their son could be a Vorkosigan heir, if Aral Vorkosigan decides to keep ignoring his Vor duty and living to spite his father. If only Olivia could have done that, she thinks, then ruthlessly crushes the thought. If she were anything more like her father, she would have killed Serg herself for what he did to her, and damn the consequences.

Alys laughs in her face and says, "dear, do you think Ezar's going to live forever?"

 

5.

Olivia becomes the Princess-Dowager at twenty-three and she marries Lord Regent Padma Vorpatril a year later.

Padma says, "Livie, you're terrifying when you're being ruthlessly political," but it's like her first marriage. There's never any question that it's necessary.

Gregor turns eight and Captain Negri gives ImpSec over to his protege and Padma looks at Simon Illyan and then back at Olivia and she kicks him under the table when he starts laughing.

"Cute little prole puppy," Padma murmurs. "Want to bet how long that look lasts?"

Cordelia spends half her time on Beta Colony and half her time being a very bemused Lady Vorkosigan, and on the day she imports a hundred uterine replicators and the medtechs to operate them, Olivia first seriously considers having more children.

Instead, she tells Cordelia that no Vor would ever use them without someone else doing it first. Vorkosigans lead from the front and Piotr Miles Vorkosigan is the first Vor to come out of a uterine replicator on Barrayar. His siblings follow over the years, and Olivia tells herself that she doesn't give any kind of damn that her father and her grandfather will never force _them_ into arranged marriages.

Gregor dotes on his aunts and uncles and when he turns twelve and she first sees him in a military uniform other than his ceremonial Imperial red-and-blues, she goes back to her quarters and pulls out that old knife and stares at it for a long time.

"I hate this planet," she says, perfectly calm, to Alys, and Alys takes the knife from her and puts it down carefully on the table.

"That's why we're changing it," Alys says.

 

6.

Olivia gets on rather well with Cordelia. It's surprising. When she was younger, galactics mostly looked at her like they pitied her, and these days, galactics don't really even look, they think they understand her at just a glance, like her life is that simple. She's a woman in Barrayaran politics, she's the Emperor's mother, she's married to the Regent. _Keeping him in line with sex_ is the common slander, and Olivia finds that hilarious; Padma's sleeping with Illyan and Olivia's sleeping with Alys, and being married means that men don't flirt with her or try to force her to marry them for political gain, and it's _wonderful_.

She's Olivia Charlotte Vorkosigan Vorbarra and the only times she has civil conversations with her father is when they're in public or Gregor's around to hear them, and Padma practically raised her and that used to be common knowledge, so people are constantly idiots for not realizing the personal realities behind the political subterfuges.

And she counts a Betan as a friend. It's, in all, a very strange life, and one she's grateful for. She's shed enough blood and tears to have earned it, more than any man on any front line in any war.

 

7.

Gregor's twentieth birthday is a relief to them all and Olivia tells him that she'll organize any wedding he wants, but his marriage is his own to choose.

Padma says, "choose soon, sire." They've been having very long conversations with Gregor about Imperial succession and about politics, and when Olivia tells Gregor that she's been thinking about moving into one of the properties that Padma inherited from Xav once the birthday festivities are over, Gregor goes pale and asks her to please stay, mama.

They haven't hidden anything about Serg from Gregor except why he died, and after Olivia hears Gregor explaining to one of Cordelia's babies that his father was killed by Ges Vorrutyer in a lovers quarrel and that's why he doesn't have a father but only a step-father, Olivia decides to tell him.

Gregor takes it rather well, she thinks. And then Gregor gets drunk and tries to throw himself out of a window because, he explains later after he's been patched up in ImpMil, no Emperor would be better than the ones they have, where they keep ordering their family members executed, where madness runs sharply through it, where the only way to survive is to assassinate your enemies in the night.

He's crying as he says it and Olivia hates this planet, where her son thinks he has to die first before things will be able to get better, when Olivia's felt that way so many times, when all the walls crush around her and she wonders if anyone can hear her screaming, if there's any way to make this whole damn planet just stop, if anything matters at all.

"When I was pregnant," Olivia tells him, stroking his hair gently, "I was terrified you were going to be a mutie or a girl and I would have to do this all over again. I felt like I knew my mother must have felt when she was pregnant with me, and then I broke her heart. Gregor, if you want to spit on the past, keep changing everything. This planet will try to eat you. It's up to you to not let it. You just have to turn your back and keep moving."

Olivia kisses Gregor's forehead and knows that her war isn't one that ever really ends. It just changes.

 

8.

The Princess-Dowager runs the Vorbarra's District and there's been grumbling about that for years because Gregor's District is the richest one on the planet and the Vorkosigan's District is one of the poorest, but when the whispers about Olivia diverting funds to her father start to pick up in earnest, Olivia tells Illyan to find out who is spreading them, because this isn't idle gossip, it's something worse.

It's one more lesson to Gregor about treason, she thinks, but he's never needed any more.

General Vorkosigan had died in his sleep, the first Vorkosigan Count to die in his bed from old age and not war wounds, and Aral Vorkosigan is the only Gran'da that Gregor still has, and it's just one more knife twisting in the dark, it's just one more attempt to force a Vorbarra to execute his relatives to keep the peace.

Olivia hates this planet and the choices it forces and she burns a clump of her hair on Serg's grave and curses his memory. Things are better than they would have been if he'd survived, but there's still so far to go.

Alys is her eyes and ears at court, heading the centuries-old Vorinnis intelligence network that rivals ImpSec, and Olivia likes playing politics and pulling the strings behind the scenes, and Padma is her official escort and keeps a low profile because he's no less a magnet for plots than he was when Serg was alive, and they're still fighting the same old war but in different ways. They're still that triumvirate of plotters and spies that they were the night before Olivia's wedding, when Olivia had threatened to kill herself before allowing her family to sacrifice her like any other pawn on their chessboard, and Padma and Alys had sworn to her that they would commit treason at her word, if she ever gave it.

And Serg is dead and Cordelia is scandalizing and revolutionizing everything in ways that Olivia never could have, and Olivia's sisters will go to university and marry for love and Olivia's winning this war, but her victories are no less marked with bodies and blood than her grandfather's victories were.

Alys teases her, calling her General Olivia, and Olivia stares at the stars at night and when she dreams of escape, it's a different dream than it used to be.

 

9.

Gregor tells her that he's fallen in love and she hugs him and tells him that she's proud of him, and Gregor marries the daughter of the Escobaran ambassador on the Midsummer's Day before his twenty-fifth birthday, and when Olivia was his age, she had married her cousin to avoid having to marry a power-hungry shark, and things are getting better.

Elizabeth, Cordelia's oldest daughter, wears a Betan earring at court that indicates things that Vorbarr Sultana society barely has words for, and Olivia's siblings are scandal-prone and wonderful, and Olivia thinks that maybe she could stand to have more children now, now that it wouldn't be a noose around their necks, now that things have changed so drastically that she can see the change when it happens and not only in hindsight, now that Barrayar is nothing that Serg or Ezar or old General Piotr would have recognized.

And it's easier to smile now, having a quiet family dinner with Alys and Padma, just reveling in it all, and it's their Barrayar now, and Gregor's first child is a daughter and Olivia thinks: she's won.


End file.
